Monthly Archives: April 2017

(This article was reprinted in the online magazine of the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, May 1 2017.)

Wealth is necessary in order to live well, but it is not sufficient. You may have lots of money but live terribly if you have no friends or wisdom. You may have mistaken part of a good life—sufficient wealth to live—with the whole of the good life. For money isn’t an end in itself, it is merely a means to an end.

But let’s suppose that you realize all this. Let’s suppose further that you aren’t materialistic and you want to do good things for the world. Now imagine that you’ve been offered a well-paid position with a good company. We’ll assume your job doesn’t entail you doing anything immoral in the usual sense of the term. (We won’t consider participating in the world’s economic system to be intrinsically immoral.) Let’s further assume that the job isn’t your dream job, so you won’t be “doing what you love.”1 Finally, let’s suppose you are the kind of person who worries that money might corrupt you, or that the job isn’t exactly what you want. What should you do?

My advice would be to take the job. Obviously the job and its benefits—medical and dental insurance, retirement, etc.—help you to live well. But even more importantly for the idealistic, having some modicum of wealth allows you to help others. So while many people aren’t wise and think money is just a means to buy trinkets, the wise realize wealth can also buy freedom and the ability to do good. Money is power that can be used to benefit people—as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do—or it can hurt people—as Donald Trump and the Koch brothers do.

So when offered a modicum of wealth you are essentially being offered a key that unlocks a door that gives you the chance to effect on the world, to have some power. That power can be used for buying frivolous possessions or for hurting others, but it can also be used for good. And with more power comes the ability to do more good. On the other hand, if you have nothing, you have nothing to give.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the only kind of power is financial. There’s moral and intellectual power too. But the way our world is set up, sometimes that’s just not enough. So I say be adventurous and accept a key if offered it. Go thru the door and you may find more keys that open more doors and perhaps, in some distant time, you will help unlock doors for others.

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A common criticism of Stoicism is that is doesn’t leave proper room for the emotions or passions (EorP), and thus that it advocate a passionless, unemotional and apathetic life. Let’s investigate this claim.

The Stoics Don’t Reject Emotions, They Reject Passions

Let us begin by quoting John Sellars, a Research Fellow at King’s College London: “the Stoics never spoke about the emotions in the way we do.” Today the word emotion refers to almost any mental feeling that we contrast with reason. Understood in this sense, “the Stoics do not reject emotions, they reject passions, and that is quite a different thing.”

The Stoics believe we should feel affinity, care and concern for our friends and family. They also acknowledge that we are affected by external events, that we have natural reactions like being scared or shocked. So jumping behind a wall after hearing an explosion isn’t a passion. But hearing that you might lose your job, and then becoming anxious and fearful is a passion. In this case the Stoics counsel that we defeat these negative responses by thinking about whether they’re called for. Perhaps we won’t lose our job, or perhaps it won’t be so bad if we do. This suggests that our fear may result of poor thinking.

As for good passions, the Stoics say the only thing that is always good for us is virtue, basically a healthy state of mind. “This is the only genuine good, the only thing that guarantees happiness, the only thing the absence of which guarantees misery.” Good or proper passions follow from mental states produced by good reasoning. As Sellars puts it:

The ideal Stoic life is thus far from unemotional in the English sense of the word. Indeed, what the Stoics propose we reject are not emotions in the English sense of the word at all, if emotions are defined as feelings that contrast with reasoning. Instead what the Stoics propose we reject is faulty reasoning based on confused value judgments and the unpleasant consequences that this generates.

What Do The Stoics Mean By Passions (or Emotions)?

For those who feel more comfortable using the contemporary word emotion, we’ll continue our analysis using the phrase “emotions or passions” (EorP), as long as we remember that the older idea of passions is really what the Stoics have in mind.

Now the four most common accounts or definitions of EorP provided by the Stoics include:

An excessive impulse.

An impulse that ignores reason.

A false judgment or opinion.

A fluttering of the soul.

The first two definitions tell us that EorP are a kind of impulse or force. They are things that happen to us, as contrasted with actions or things that we do. EorP can be compared to running downhill but being unable to stop; they propel you forward. EorP also have a temporal dimension. Typically they are strongest in the present, and weaken over time.

The second and third definitions emphasize that EorP disrupt and contradict reason. EorP misrepresent a thing’s value, and then misdirect our impulses toward achieving it. For example, if we exaggerate the importance of wealth and then pursue it excessively, we may live poorly. Or if we want revenge and act on that angry impulse, we may end up in jail. In such cases EorP are either based on, or produce, bad reasoning.

The fourth definition of EorP as “a fluttering in the soul” derives from the Stoics sense that EorP have a physical basis and physical consequences—just think of the effect of EorP on heart rate and blood pressure.

The main passions the Stoics identify are appetite and fear. If we think something is good, we have an appetite for it; if we think something is bad, we fear it. These passions are related to two others: pleasure and distress. If we satisfy our appetites, we may experience pleasure, whereas if we fail to satisfy them, we may experience distress. Similarly, if we fear something we experience distress, whereas if our fears don’t materialize we may experience pleasure.

Why Excessive Emotions (or Passions) Are Bad For Us

When we (too strongly) experience EorP we make errors in judgment concerning the good and bad, and the present and the future. The idea is that something may be pleasurable in the present that is actually bad for us, or we may have an appetite for something in the future, which is also bad for us. Likewise, we might think some action is bad in the present and experience distress, even though the thing is really good for us, or we might fear something in the future that either won’t happen or won’t that bad even if it does happen.

So excessive EorP result in mistaken judgments and emotional disquietude. For example, the satisfaction of appetites for food, drink, and sex may give us less pleasure than we thought. So it isn’t rational to risk more important things like health in their pursuit or to suffer from their absence. Likewise, things we fear—humiliation, betrayal, pain, anxiety—may not be as bad as we thought. So it isn’t rational to undermine our lives paralyzed by fear.

The Proper Role of Emotions (or Passions)

So the goal isn’t to reject EorP altogether but to have a balanced emotional life. Think joy rather than pleasure, caution rather than fear, or reasonable hope rather than appetite. As for distress, we should reject it completely.

So the Stoics oppose EorP that psychologically manipulate us, thereby undermining our reason and volition, not that we shouldn’t care about anything. Rather, you should act as a result of rational deliberation. Consider an analogy. We may want to run or lift weights, but don’t run down too steep of an incline or lift too much weight—that would be excessive.

It is hard to know where to draw the line between restrained and excessive EorP, but clearly we will live better when reason prevents us from being slaves to our passions. EorP should follow from, not lead, rational reflection. This seems like good advice.

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Alain de Botton ( 1969 – ) penned an astute essay in the New York Times titled: “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.” De Botton is a Swiss-born British author who co-founded The School of Life in 2008. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy’s relevance to everyday life and offering sound practical advice. His published works include: On Love: A Novel, which has sold more than two million copies, and his newest book, The Course of Love. His other books include:

Now, why will you marry the wrong person? One reason is that we are all flawed. Were we more self-aware, the first question perspectives mates would ask each other is: “And how are you crazy?” We don’t recognize we’re all crazy because we often abandoned relationships before they get complicated or, if we live alone, we assume we’re easy to get along with. And our friends and family hesitate to tell us the truth about ourselves. Everyone is psychologically unhealthy to varying degrees. And typically people don’t spend enough time together before committing to another person to know this.

Now for most of recorded history, people married for reasons of finance, religion, politics, convenience, or their marriages were otherwise arranged. Such marriages were often disastrous and today have been replaced in most of the world with the marriage of feeling or emotion. “What matters in the marriage of feeling is that two people are drawn to each other by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right.” And while we think we seek happiness in marriage, we often seek something we associated with childhood—like helping a parent or being deprived of their love. And we reject potential partners because they might be “too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable—given that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign.”

Loneliness is another cause of choosing bad partners. If remaining single is unbearable, it isn’t surprising we choose poorly. We might choose anyone just to avoid the fate of remaining single. Another reason we choose poorly is that we want to make the feeling of falling in love seem permanent, but there is “no solid connection between these feelings and the institution of marriage.” For marriage isn’t about passionate love; it is about work and strife, money and children.

Yet the good news is that “it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person.” We don’t need to abandon our spouse, just the stupid idea of Romantic love—that some perfect person exists who will satisfy all our needs. Instead, mature people recognize:

… that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us—and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.

This “philosophy of pessimism … relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage.” That another person can’t save us from ourselves is not surprising, but should be expected. Still, some people are better for us than others. Who are they?

The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently—the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition. (My emphasis.)

Loving is about learning to be more forgiving of our own and others faults. Love isn’t something we fall into, but something we learn to do, as Erich Fromm explained years ago.

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Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. After studying at the Amherst Academy in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, before returning to her family home in Amherst. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships depended entirely upon correspondence. She lived primarily as a recluse.

While Dickinson was a prolific poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. Although her acquaintances were probably aware of her writing, it was not until after her death that her younger sister discovered Dickinson’s cache of poems. Today most experts consider Dickinson to be one of the greatest of all American poets. Here is one of my favorites.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Analysis – Dickinson likens the concept of hope to a singing bird. Hope’s sound is sweetest during in the gale of despair, which itself feels sore by its battle with hope. Hope withstands cold and the unfamiliar, providing solace without asking for recompense. (My own views on hope are summarized here.)

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Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, originally published in 1926, has sold millions of copies and it launched publishing giant Simon & Schuster. It has probably introduced more Americans to philosophy than any other book. It is one of the first philosophy books I ever read and, thanks to a gift from my son-in-law, I own a signed copy. The book’s introduction beautifully discusses the value of philosophy. I reprint it here.

There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.

Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, “that dear delight;” when the love of a modestly elusive truth seemed more glorious – incomparably — than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. “Life has meaning,” we feel with Browning. “To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility. We strive with the chaos about and within, but we should believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand. “Life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with!” We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov –– “one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.” We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance.

We want to know that the little things are little, and the things big, before it is too late. We want to see things now as they will seem forever — “in the light of eternity.” We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by harmonizing our desires, for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics — and perhaps in logic and metaphysics, too.

“To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not merely to have subtle thoughts, or even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.” We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind,” Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest will either be supplied, or its loss will not be felt.” Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

… .

We should study not merely philosophies—but also philosophers. We should spend our time with the saints and martyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirits play about us until perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what da Vinci called “the noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.”

Each of the philosophers has some lesson for us—if we approach [them] properly. “Do you know,” asks Emerson, “the secret of the true scholar? In every [one of them] there is something… I may learn of [them], and in that I am [their] pupil.” Well, surely we may take this attitude to the masterminds of history without hurt to our pride! And we may flatter ourselves with that other thought of Emerson’s, that when genius speaks to us we feel a ghostly reminiscence of having ourselves, in our distant youth, had vaguely this selfsame thought which genius now speaks, but which we had not art or courage to clothe with form and utterance.

And indeed, great [people] speak to us only so far as we have ears and souls to hear them—only so far as we have in us the roots, at least, of that which flowers out in them. We, too, have had the experiences they had, but we did not suck those experiences dry of their secret and subtle meanings: We were not sensitive to the overtones of the reality that hummed about us. Genius hears the overtones — and the music of the spheres. Genius knows what Pythagoras meant when he said that “philosophy is the highest music.”

So let us listen to these [philosophers], ready to forgive them their passing errors, eager to learn the lessons which they are so eager to teach. “Do you then be reasonable” said old Socrates to Crito, “and do not mind whether the teachers of philosophy are good or bad, but think only of Philosophy herself. Try to examine her well and truly, and if she be evil, seek to turn away all [people] from her — but if she be what I believe she is, then follow her and serve her and be of good cheer.”

I too felt the pull of this “dear delight” almost 50 years ago. Since then it has been a constant companion, even in the most troubling times. I’m fortunate to have encountered philosophy, and I thank all those who introduced me to the world of mind.